by Graham Seal
The country in the vicinity of the landing is formidable and forbidding. To the sea it presents a steep front, broken into innumerable ridges, bluffs, valleys, and sandpits. Rising to a height of several hundred feet the surface is bare, crumbly sandstone, with thick shrubbery about six feet in height, which is ideal for snipers, as the Australasians soon found to their cost. On the other hand, the Australasians proved themselves adepts at this kind of warfare.
CASUALTIES IN BOATS.
In the early part of the day heavy casualties were suffered in the boats conveying troops from the destroyers, tugs, and transports. The enemy’s sharpshooters, hidden everywhere, concentrated their fire on the boats. When close in, at least three boats broke away from their tow and drifted down the coast without control, being sniped at the whole way, and steadily losing men.
The work of disembarking proceeded mechanically under a point-blank fire. The moment the boats touched the beach the troops jumped ashore and doubled for cover; but the gallant boat crews had to pull in and out under a galling fire from hundreds of points.
All through the 25th this went on, the boats landing troops, ammunition, and stores. When it was daylight the warships endeavoured to support them by heavy fire from secondary armaments; but not knowing the enemy’s position this support was more moral than real.
SPLENDIDLY CARRIED OUT.
When the sun had fully risen we could see that the Australasians had actually established themselves on the ridge, and were trying to work their way northward along it. The fighting was so confused and occurred on such broken ground that it was difficult to follow exactly what happened on the 25th; but the covering force’s task was so splendidly carried out that it allowed the disembarkation of the remainder to proceed uninterruptedly, except for the never-ceasing sniping. But then the Australians, whose blood was up, instead of entrenching, rushed northwards and eastwards, searching for fresh enemies to bayonet. It was difficult country in which to entrench. They therefore preferred to advance.
AUSTRALASIANS IN TROUBLE.
The Turks had only had a weak force actually holding the beach, and had relied on the difficult ground and their snipers to delay the advance until reinforcements came. Some of the Australasians who pushed inland were counter attacked and almost outflanked by oncoming reserves. They had to fall back after suffering heavy losses.
The Turks continued to counter attack the whole afternoon; but the Australasians did not yield a foot on the main ridge. Reinforcements poured up from the beach, but the Turks enfiladed the beach with two field guns from Gaba Tepe. This shrapnel fire was incessant and deadly. The warships vainly for some hours tried to silence them.
The majority of the heavy casualties during the day were from shrapnel, which swept the beach and ridge where the Australasians were established. Later in the day the guns were silenced or forced to withdraw, and the cruiser moving close inshore plastered Gaba Tepe with a hail of shell.
PRESSURE BY ENEMY.
Towards dusk the attacks became more vigorous, the enemy being supported by powerful artillery inland, which the ships’ guns were powerless to deal with. The pressure on the Australasians became heavier and their line had to be contracted.
General Birdwood and his staff landed in the afternoon and devoted their energies to securing the position so as to hold firm until next morning, when they hoped to get field guns into position.
Some idea of the difficulty can be gathered when it is remembered that every round of ammunition and all the water and stores had to be landed on a narrow beach, and carried up pathless hills, through a valley several hundred feet high, to the firing line. The whole mass of troops was concentrated in a very small area, and was unable to reply, though exposed to relentless and incessant shrapnel fire, which swept every yard of the ground. Fortunately much of it was badly aimed, and burst too high.
HEROISM OF WOUNDED.
A serious problem was the getting of the wounded from the shore. All those unable to hobble had to be carried from the hills on a stretcher, and then hastily dressed and carried to the boats. Boat parties worked unceasingly the entire day and night.
The courage displayed by these wounded Australians will never be forgotten. Hastily placed in trawlers and lighters’ boats, they were towed to the ships. In spite of their sufferings they cheered the ship from which they had set out in the morning. In fact, I have never seen anything like these wounded Australians in war before.
Though many were shot to bits, without hope of recovery, their cheers resounded throughout the night. You could see in the midst of the mass of suffering humanity arms waving in greeting to the crews of the warships. They were happy because they knew they had been tried for the first time, and had not been found wanting.
A WORTHY FEAT.
For fifteen mortal hours they occupied the heights under incessant shell fire, without the moral or material support of a single gun ashore, and subjected the whole time to a violent counter attack, by a brave enemy, skilfully led, with snipers deliberately picking off every officer who endeavoured to give a command or lead the men.
There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and the storming of the heights, and above all, the holding on whilst reinforcements were landing. These raw colonial troops in these desperate hours proved worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons, the Aisne, Ypres, and Neuve Chapelle . . .
It would be another week before Australia heard from the official war correspondent, Charles Bean, who took part in the landing. His account had been held up by military red tape but it confirmed the glory admired by Bartlett at a distance and ended with a few paragraphs under the heading ‘Imperishable Fame’:
But when all is said, the feat which will go down in history is that first Sunday’s fighting when three Australian Brigades stormed, in face of a heavy fire, tier after tier of cliffs and mountains, apparently as impregnable as Govett’s Leap. The sailors who saw the Third Brigade go up those heights and over successive summits like whirligig with wild cheers, and with bayonets flashing, speak of it with tears of enthusiasm in their eyes. New Zealanders are just as generous in their appreciation. It is hard to distinguish between the work of the brigades. They all fought fiercely and suffered heavily; but considering that performed last Sunday, it is a feat which is fit to rank beside the battle of the heights of Abraham.
I believe that the British at Cape Helles fought a tremendous fight. Of Australia it may be said that Australian infantry, and especially the Third Brigade, have made a name which will never die. Around me as I write, guns of half a dozen warships are shaking the hills. The evening is a quiet one. From the ridges above comes the continuous rattle of musketry. As no bullets are whistling overhead, the firing must be by our men. The issue cannot be in doubt, but one knows that even if it were, nothing would take away from the Australian and New Zealand infantry the fame of last Sunday’s fighting.
Talk about go!
While Bartlett had the advantage of viewing much of the battlefront from a distant vantage point and Bean was able to roam from place to place compiling his reports, Private F. H. Richardson had a more restricted but more intense experience both on the sea and on the shore. Around June 1915, from an Egyptian hospital, he wrote about it to his sister in Unley (in Adelaide, South Australia). Richardson landed with one of the first waves and was wounded, but he was anxious to return to the fighting.
I am going to put in for a discharge so if there are any troops leaving for Gallipoli next week I may be chosen to go back to the front with the next lot. We are sick of being here in Egypt. You may think it’s only kid but every jack one of us are the same. We want to get back to see how our own mates are faring. As for fear, well you don’t have time to think of it. Of course it makes a man shrink away when the shrapnel starts bursting all round and kicking up the dust all over you but their artillery is nothing to ours. Between our land batteries and gunboats the enemy must have had an awful time. We had a rather tic
klish job with their big guns for a little while, but our warships have been dealing old Harry to them, and I think by now they must have most of the Turks’ guns silenced.
We have good trenches now. It is rotten luck to get hit. Only about one in every ten that get hit is killed, so you see we have a pretty good gamble. You ask if I am really glad that I came to the front. Our company was chosen to be the landing party for our battalion at Gallipoli. I can assure you that there was not a prouder man than yours truly, although we had the toughest job of any. I never felt more pleased in my life than when we steamed out of Lemnos Island for Gallipoli on the battleship Prince of Wales. It would have made anyone’s heart glad to be there to see the sight. All the warboats sailed in a line, twisting and turning like a huge snake as they followed the leader. Then came the battleships, and then the torpedo destroyers and torpedo boats. We cruised about till nearly morning. About 1.30 a.m. we had a good hot meal, and then got ready to get into the boats to go ashore. The rowing boats were towed by motor boats.
All went well until we got near the shore, all packed in the boat like sardines. All of a sudden we heard a single rifle shot, and silence for about half a minute (which seemed like an hour). Then hell was let loose, and hundreds of shots from machine guns and every other sort of gun began to pepper us. We all ducked our heads as low as we could, and kept quiet. Then the motor boats cast off so that we could run our boats aground, but we had to row a good way and with 40 men in one of those big ship’s boats it is no light job to pull with only four oars. Some of our poor boys never landed. The bullets were like hailstones. When the boats did run aground we all had to jump out in the water, and I, being in the stern of the boat, jumped into the deepest water, with a box of ammunition. I was in water up to my armpits. I nearly fell over three times, but we got ashore all right, put the ammunition away on the beach, and then joined in the charge.
Talk about go! We did go. We could only just see the enemy, as it was only break of day. You ought to have heard the cheer when they gave us the word to charge. You could have heard it for miles if you could have stopped to listen. Some were saying (or roaring), ‘Come on, Australia!’ and others ‘Australia for ever!’ and some ‘Come on, boys!’ and ‘Give it to ’em, boys!’ but the funniest part of it was hearing chaps talking to themselves, or at least at the Turks, and calling them all the Saturday night bar fight words ever heard. It was good game running along and shooting as fast as ever you could go, but I nearly lost my rifle the first shot. I forgot to put it close to my shoulder, and it kicked nearly out of my hands.
I got rather a late start when they began to entrench, as I stayed behind to help another chap to give a lift to a wounded man out of the range of the lead pills. I hadn’t got a hole big enough to hide a bottle of West End when they counter-attacked us, but I kept pegging away with my old entrenching tool every chance I got, and I finished up by getting a fairly snug place, though I used to get stiff as a board lying in the one position. I made it large enough to kneel up and fire at last. Then, when we did get a spell (which was five minutes at the most) I would have a lie down and next time I would sit down, and the next time I would kneel up, so my positions were varied. Anyhow, our trenches are all right now, as we got the shovels to work. We are all happy as Larry, as we are doing so well. There were some most awfully sad sights the first week, but it may never be so bad again.
The landing
This recollected account of the landing, written ‘By a Man of the Tenth’ (A. R. Perry), appeared in The Anzac Book (1915), a collection of writing and drawing by the men at Gallipoli. It provides a more crafted account of the attack from the memory of a soldier who took part in it.
‘Come on, lads, have a good hot supper—there’s business doing.’ So spoke No. 10 Platoon Sergeant of the 10th Australian Battalion to his men, lying about all sorts of odd corners aboard the battleship Prince of Wales, in the first hour on the morning of April 25th, 1915. The ship, or her company, had provided a hot stew of bully beef, and the lads set to and took what proved, alas to many, their last real meal together. They laugh and joke as though picnicking. Then a voice: ‘Fall in!’ comes ringing down the ladderway from the deck above. The boys swing their rifles, silently make their way on deck, and stand in grim black masses. All lights are out, and only harsh, low commands break the silence. ‘This way No. 9 –No. 10– C company.’ Almost blindly we grope our way to the ladder leading to the huge barge below, which is already half full of silent, grim men, who seem to realise that at last, after eight months of hard, solid training in Australia, Egypt and Lemnos Island, they are now to be called upon to carry out the object of it all.
‘Full up, sir,’ whispers the midshipman in the barge.
‘Cast off and drift astern,’ says the ship’s officer in charge of the embarkation. Slowly we drift astern, until the boat stops with a jerk, and twang goes the hawser that couples the boats and barges together. Silently the boats are filled with men, and silently drop astern of the big ship, until, all being filled, the order is given to the small steamboats: ‘Full steam ahead.’ Away we go, racing and bounding, dipping and rolling, now in a straight line, now in a half circle, on through the night.
The moon has just about sunk below the horizon. Looking back, we can see the battleship coming on slowly in our rear, ready to cover our attack. All at once our pinnace gives a great start forward, and away we go for land just discernible one hundred yards away on our left.
Then—crack-crack! Ping-ping! Zip-zip! Trenches full of rifles upon the shore and surrounding hills open on us, and machine guns, hidden in gullies or redoubts, increase the murderous hail. Oars are splintered, boats are perforated. A sharp moan, a low gurgling cry, tells of a comrade hit. Boats ground in four or five feet of water owing to the human weight contained in them. We scramble out, struggle to the shore, and, rushing across the beach, take cover under a low sandbank.
‘Here, take off my pack, and I’ll take off yours.’ We help one another to lift the heavy, water-soaked packs off. ‘Hurry up, there,’ says our sergeant. ‘Fix bayonets.’ Click! And the bayonets are fixed. ‘Forward!’ And away we scramble up the hills in front. Up, up we go, stumbling in holes and ruts. With a ringing cheer we charge the steep hill, pulling ourselves up by roots and branches of trees; at times digging our bayonets into the ground, and pushing ourselves up to a foothold, until topping the hill, we found the enemy had made themselves very scarce. What had caused them to fly from a position from which they should have driven us back into the sea every time? A few scattered Turks showing in the distance we instantly fired on. Some fell to rise no more; other fell wounded and, crawling into the low bushes, sniped our lads in plenty, cunningly hidden in the heart of the low green shrubs. They accounted for a lot of our boys in the first few days, but gradually were rooted out. Over the hill we dashed, and down into what is now called ‘Shrapnel Gully,’ and up the other hillside, until, on reaching the top, we found that some of the lads of the 3rd Brigade had commenced to dig in. We skirted round to the plateau at the head of the gully, and took up our line of defence.
As soon as it was light enough to see, the guns on Gaba Tepe, on our right, and two batteries away on our left opened up a murderous hail of shrapnel on our landing parties. The battleships and cruisers were continuously covering the landing of troops, broadsides going into the batteries situated in tunnels in the distant hillside. All this while the seamen from the different ships were gallantly rowing and managing the boats carrying the landing parties. Not one man that is left of the original brigade will hear a word against our gallant seamen. England may well be proud of them and all true Australians are proud to call them comrades.
Se-ee-e-e . . . bang . . . swish! The front firing line was now being baptized by its first shrapnel. Zir-zir . . . Zip-zip! Machine-guns, situated on each front, flank and centre, opened on our front line. Thousands of bullets began flying round and over us, sometimes barely missing. Now and then one heard a low gurgling moan, and, tu
rning, one saw near at hand some chum, who only a few seconds before had been laughing and joking, now lying gasping, with his life blood soaking down into the red clay and sand. ‘Five rounds rapid at the scrub in front,’ comes the command of our subaltern. Then an order down the line: ‘Fix bayonets!’ Fatal order—was it not, perhaps, some officer of the enemy who shouted it? (for they say such things were done). Out flash a thousand bayonets, scintillating in the sunlight like a thousand mirrors, signalling our position to the batteries away on our left and front. We put in another five rounds rapid at the scrub in front. Then, bang-swish! Bang-swish! Bang-swish! And over our line, and front, and rear, such a hellish fire of lyddite and shrapnel that one wonders how anyone could live amidst such a hail of death-dealing lead and shell. ‘Ah, got me!’ says one lad on my left, and he shakes his arms. A bullet had passed through the biceps of his left arm, missed his chest by an inch, passed through the right forearm, and finally struck the lad between him and me a bruising blow on the wrist. The man next him—a man from the 9th Battalion—started to bind up his wounds, as he was bleeding freely. All the time shrapnel was hailing down on us. ‘Oh-h!’ comes from directly behind me, and looking around, I see poor little Lieutenant B——, of C Company, has been badly wounded. From both hips to his ankle blood is oozing through pants and puttees, and he painfully drags himself to the rear. With every pull he moans cruelly. I raise him to his feet, and at a very slow pace start to help him to shelter. But, alas! I have only got him about fifty yards from the firing line when again, bang-swish! And we are both peppered by shrapnel and shell. My rifle-butt was broken off to the trigger-guard, and I received a smashing blow that laid my cheek on my shoulder. The last I remembered was poor Lieutenant B—— groaning again as we both sank to the ground.
